This is the chronicle of a strange, frustrating, yet oddly enlightening week in Austin, where I spent most of the last several days attending summer orientation. This may come off as eight days’ worth of whining, but I promise you, there is an inner message: know presciently what you need for the rest of your life or evil gnomes with ears the size of oak trees will beat you with radishes. They aren’t very well-equipped, these gnomes.
Tuesday: The dead pigeon affair.
This day was supposed to be my birthday, but Fate intervened and said, “No, this shall not be a day of celebration. You will hate everything.” In my experience, there are two types of bad days: there are bad days when I trip over or run into everything in sight and wind up with strangely-shaped bruises (is it a continent or an eggplant?). There are also bad days when I get nothing done and recede into a proto-human state, forgoing basic intelligence and language in favor of grunted communication back and forth. Sandy, at least, has also learned this language, although she has the tendency to punctuate her grunts with whines, yelps, and barks, which are far beyond my capacity to understand.
As far as bad days go, this was a combination of both. And I knew it would be so because I saw a massacred pigeon on my guided campus tour. This was no run-of-the-mill dead pigeon. This pigeon fought against a mighty army of hoofed sledgehammers — by fought, I mean of course, did not dodge at all — but instead, was pummeled by the whole herd. There may also have been a car involved. There is no other way to explain the pancake-nature of the bird nor the strange aura of fluids. Forgive me for this description, but any amateur haruspex knows that a dead bird, especially a dead bird with a coagulated mess of innards, does not augur well.
That would be two Roman religious references at once, for those of you keeping score at home.
A passel of red tape, woes, and wasted money.
At any rate, not only did I walk the length of the original forty acres of the campus (roughly), but I also spent half the day in underdeveloped conversation with myself, my brother, my cousin, my parents, and my mom’s friend who was helping me out. My first recession into this state occurred when I was asked to produce a photo ID. Since I didn’t have either a driver’s license or a passport on me — valid government IDs — I was told to walk down Guadalupe in search of a mythical place called Jenn’s Copies. It was hot as Hades outside, even though it was only around 9 AM. Just my luck. Since I couldn’t find this long-forgotten land, I stumbled into a CVS and handed over $10 for a passport photo that looked absolutely terrible. Looking at it, I could conjure up ancient nightmares of “Boochandhi”, the monster that my mom used to tell me lived in our apple tree and would come out to eat me if I was not asleep.
My mom is amazing.
Because I didn’t have an official ID, I couldn’t do any of the numerous adminstrative tasks that most people take care of on the first day, such as getting their UT EIDs upgraded and their student IDs made. So I waited in line and read some of Love by Toni Morrison, which is, as it turns out, is just as amazing as each of her other books. Please name a planet after her.
I also ended skipping the Chemistry 301 test I signed up for in order to take a Mathematics Level 1 test in the same time slot to avoid a conflict on the next day. But Fate is a bitter woman. I was given the room for Day 2, when I was originally supposed to take the test. The room for Day 1, as I found out later, was completely across campus. So I missed the test entirely. I also didn’t end up using any of the photos I had printed. Fantastic. Also, I was famished. I ate about the amount of calories one can find in a bowl of watery pasta. Did I mention that this pasta is bland and tasteless?
The score is now Campus: 1; Me: -feet and unconsciousness.
Wednesday: So if Phyllis Wheatley sold her soul to the devil…
On this day, I resolved to beat Fate at her own game. I took a twenty question Texas Government take (that I didn’t even need to take) uninterrupted by her wild and foul antics. But we met face to face at my Plan II Honors meeting, where we picked our signature and world literature classes via a lottery. Staring confidently at the dice, that miserable spirit threw the whole cup at me and screamed, “YAAAHTTZEEEE” although I don’t believe that anyone but me heard it. So I ended up with a Women’s Literature class that I will make the most of, but secretly read Don Quixote, T.S. Eliot, and Joseph Conrad in, as an homage to the class I wanted but didn’t get (Professor Hoad, wherever you are, pretend that I am in your class!). But little did she know my secret weapon — pure freaking luck — was about to save the day. By some strange feat of magic, I ended up with my first choice signature class — an study of the mythical literary figure Faust — and kicked Fate in the shins and ran away. Hallelujah, today was going to be a far better day.
Thursday: Waffles, kayaks, and related escapades.
I had a bit of a fight with the Jester waffle maker today and almost set my waffle on fire. I am no amateur with waffle makers. When we were in Dallas for my brother’s medical school graduation, I mastered wafflecraft, but my skills were not quite honed. Or more accurately, the not-really-nonstick coating of the waffle pan was not quite ready for extreme waffling. I ended up with half of a waffle, even after a member of the cafeteria staff (I shall name him Monseigneur Wafflé) tried to save the other half. I sense that Fate had a hand, but none of that mattered! I was going kayaking!
After I went to a few orientation sessions, we (my brother, myself, and his two friends) headed out to Barton Springs. Kayaking is actually not quite so hard, and was a lot of fun … until my arms realized that I had been kayaking and decided to raise quite a protest several hours after we got home. I think the hardest part is keeping up a nice, fast pace when going against the current. You really have to dig into the water, and that takes a lot of effort. I took a few — alright, several — breaks in the middle, but we didn’t run aground, or run into things, or tip the boat over. I rate this escapade a stunning success. Also, we found a “voodoo pew” and a possum temple somewhere along the river. I sensed a bit of bad juju about the place, but that might have been because it was so damn hot outside.
Why is it always hot outside!
Friday: Registration, vaudeville, and stand-up comedy.
Although Tuesday was, hands-down, the worst day, Friday came packaged with its own tiny envelope of stress. Because today was class registration day! My orientation advisors gave me a rough description of the what I had to do. I believe, however, that they neglected to tell me that the furious pace I imagined for the process (I practiced typing the unique IDs for my courses in the night before) was not necessary. Once I signed in with Anoop, my faithful butler, chauffeur, and financier, at my side, and started inputing the numbers, I was surprised that I got most of the classes I wanted at pretty good times. I was even able to take an Introduction to Linguistics course in the place of the theory/modes of reasoning class that I couldn’t get into.
Then, the passport that my dad had mailed on Wednesday arrived and I upgraded my EID, got a surprisingly-not-crappy student ID made, and ran off campus to take a nap, watch a movie, and prance around until we left for the comedy show we were seeing that night: Esther’s Follies.
Austin: A city of fantastic music and hilarious drunks.
I am a huge fan of sketch comedy, having grown up on Monty Python, A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie, and Saturday Night Live, so the show was a lot of fun. Afterwards, the actors informed us that we could get into the comedy club next door for free with our Esther’s Follies ticket stubs, so we headed next door to The Velveeta Room. The only comic whose name I remember (how to spell) was Mario DiGiorgio, who was especially hilarious. On the way home, I used about half a bottle of Germ-X to get the Sharpie X’s off of my hands (yes, I get it, I’m under 21, no beer for me. That’s fine! I’m a chocolate milk person, anyway). My cousin and I missed a turn and wandered around for half an hour trying to find our way to the parking garage, and when we made it home, I sort of flopped over on the sofa.
At last, my dreaded orientation week was over!
I am now extremely dependent on episodes of Fawlty Towers and Blackadder and am currently hooked to an intravenous drip of British comedy and water from the river Thames. That is the best possible recuperation.